While the princesses are installing themselves in their new prison, we will turn for a moment to the Pretender, who had arrived on the 8th of October at Bologna, where he was to await the coming of the princess and her daughter. For seven days he remained without news, a prey to anxiety. On the 15th of October he received the first intimation of the fate that had befallen his bride, and the very next day he despatched two letters to the mother and daughter at Innsbruck.[6] From the answer to these missives we learn that the princesses had by no means given up the project of effecting their flight to Italy. The long, dreary winter evenings and the absence of all society in dull Innsbruck left them full time and opportunity to plan the best means of escape; and though they were surrounded by watchful spies and guarded by a morbidly cautious government, they yet found ways and means to communicate two or three times with their friends in the North and the South. Strange to say, the councillors themselves afforded them on one occasion the means of intercourse with the Pretender. Under the pretence that bills of exchange were awaiting her at Venice, Princess Sobiesky obtained permission to send her gentleman-in-waiting, La Haye, to the latter town to arrange "these necessary money-matters." [Footnote 6: These letters must have fallen into the hands of the councillors, for we find that exact copies of them, together with a copy of Princess Clementina's answer, were sent to the emperor, and are still preserved in the private imperial court archives at Vienna.]